Supervillainess (Part One) (8 page)

***

The sound of the television turning on
sometime later roused her. Reader’s eyes opened. It took her
sluggish mind a minute to remind her of where she was. The clock on
the box serving as a nightstand read close to six in the evening.
Judging by the brightness pouring in from the hallway, all the
lights in the apartment were on.

She checked her wounds, disturbed by how
slowly she was healing. Was it because the doctor fed her like she
was a rabbit instead of the predator she was? Pushing herself off
the bed, she decided real food was in order.

Reader exited into the hall, paused to
ensure her body would support her, then continued. She felt
stronger, her balance improved and muscles responding as normal,
even if her wounds hadn’t finished healing.

Kimber was in the living room, stretched out
on the couch, watching a movie. Reader went to the kitchen and
opened his fridge.

“What is this shit?” she asked, frowning as
she picked up a box of almond milk from its place next to a
container of hummus. She searched through everything, looking for
meat, before slamming the fridge closed.

“What’re you doing up?” Kimber asked, moving
into the doorway. He crossed his arms to display muscular
forearms.

“I need real food not this weird vegetable
shit.”

“I can make you something.”

“Pizza?”

“Call the pizza place downstairs.” He lifted
his chin towards a landline that appeared to be from the seventies
and the menus pinned to the bulletin board beside it. “I’ll give
you my credit card.”

“I have it.” She pulled his wallet from her
pocket.

He released a slow breath.
“
Why
do you have
my wallet?”

“In case I needed a pizza.” She plucked the
credit card free. “I grabbed it two nights ago while guarding the
apartment so no one would attack us because you left the door
unlocked.”

Leaning forward, Kimber snatched his wallet.
“This is one of those lines you’re not supposed to cross. If you
need money, you should ask me first.”

“As if you’d just give it to me,” she said
with a snort.

“If you needed it, I would.”

Reader’s eyes narrowed. “This game … it’s
not funny, Doc,” she warned him.

“What game?”

Turning her back to him, she called the
number listed on a flyer and ordered a large pizza with the most
meat toppings she could. Reader hung up the phone and faced the
do-gooder. He was leaning against one side of the doorway, hands in
the pockets of his sweatpants, watching her.

“Why are you here, Doc?” she asked
finally.

“To make sure you don’t fall on your ass or
bust a stitch.”

“No. In Sand City. You don’t believe in
supervillains, and you’re a long way from your
crippled-but-not-really-crippled dad.”

“That’s none of your business.”

Reader sat down at the rickety table in the
center of the kitchen, starting to feel the strain of standing too
long.

“What are you doing here?” he asked after a
moment of quiet.

“In your kitchen or Sand City?” she
returned.

“Sand City.”

“I’m competing against my brother to become
a successor to my father.”

“Then what?”

“What do you mean?”

“What happens when you become his
successor?” Kimber asked.

“That’s it. I become a supervillainess.”

“What if you didn’t, and your father left
his current occupation with no successor?”

Reader blinked, not expecting the
question. “Why would either of those things happen?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you all decided to give
up crime and find better uses of your time or … became artists,
attorneys or … maybe you write a book about your experiences.
You’re beautiful enough to be a model or actress, if you
wanted.”

Her mouth dropped open.

Kimber was serious, and she had to remind
herself he was from a different city, where the super community was
secret.

Beautiful?
The compliment was as foreign to her as the idea
of not fulfilling her destiny.

“Why are you a doctor?” she asked.

“Because I want to help people,” he
replied.

“What would you do if you weren’t?”

He shrugged. “Never considered it. I’ve
always felt this was my calling.”

“Same here. I’m meant to take my father’s
place.” She tilted her head, wishing she could read his mind and
beginning to suspect he was either blocking her, or her ability was
wounded as well as her body. “Are you recording this conversation?
Trying to slip me up so you can blackmail me?”

“I’m curious,” he replied, trying not to
smile. “I’ve never met anyone with your level of unorthodox
conviction.”

It didn’t sound like a compliment. “I’ve
never met a real do-gooder,” she said. “How do I know you won’t
turn on me and accept my brother’s offer?”

“Faith, I guess. You can’t
assume the worst about everyone you meet. Well,
you
might be able to, but it’s not
the way it’s supposed to be,” he answered. “Some things are more
important than money. You can trust me.”

“Would you do this for anyone?”

“Yeah. I help people. It’s what I do.”

“And do you tell others they’re
beautiful?”

Kimber hesitated, gazing at her. “No.”

Uncertain what that meant, or why it made
her pulse quicken, Reader fell silent. She was struggling to figure
out the doctor’s hidden agenda but coming up with no potentially
nefarious reasons he was helping her. He truly seemed serious about
caring about others.

How did such a person exist in this
world?

A knock sounded at the door.

Reader was on her feet before the second
knock came. She snatched a knife from the block on Kimber’s counter
and breezed by him.

“No weapons.” Kimber said with a sigh and
caught her wrist in one of his large hands.

“Have you ever killed anyone?” she asked,
pulling at her arm.

“Never.”

Why am I not
surprised?
“That makes one of us.” Reader
switched the knife to her left hand and tugged free from him. “Stay
here, Doc. I’ll make sure no one but the pizza guy gets through the
door.”

She went to the door and cracked it open,
ready to stab anyone who came through it. That is, until she
smelled pepperoni and cheese. Reader tossed the knife and opened
the door, welcoming the food with open arms. Closing and locking
the door after accepting her precious dinner, she faced Kimber.

“Hopefully, this pizza cures me and then
I’ll be on my way. My brother and his henchmen should never bother
you. In case they do, I’ll leave you with the address to my
compound, where you’ll be safe.”

His eyebrows went up. “Sounds like a very
un-evil thing for you to do.”

He was not only good but naïve about how
badly his life could become, if her father or brother found out
about him. But why did she care at all what happened to him?

“I don’t hate you,” she said after a pause.
“And I don’t want you dead.”

Without another word, she took the pizza
into her room and sat down to eat every last piece.

Keladry Savage was insane.

So why did Kimber find himself returning to
her wiki-page to finish reading it after she disappeared into her
room with the pizza?

On his second day off in months, he didn’t
know what else to do with his free time except watch movies, surf
the internet and spend two hours at the gym. His parents’ visit had
done nothing but make him wired, edgy, and upset, while Suzanne’s
appearance left him questioning his entire existence.

And yet, it was the alleged
supervillainess-in-training he couldn’t get off his mind. What was
it about Keladry he found compelling, in a very twisted way?

He sat with his dinner on the couch,
scrolling through the information page about her before he began
random searches. She had a dedicated page on her father’s website
and several fan sites and social media accounts obsessed with her
and everything she had ever said or done or worn. A rabid fan had
even started an animated WebTV series about her.

She was a celebrity, similar to her father,
except she had a more fanatical cult following consisting of
sex-deprived teen boys who spent far too much time creating sexy
pictures of her and posting them online.

It wasn’t that Kimber didn’t see the appeal.
She was beautiful, with the kind of hourglass shape only found on
women in comic books, and her father’s website listed her martial
arts and other weapons training. She was probably pretty badass in
a fight, assuming any of it was true. Her personality was a
challenge, but she wasn’t a completely delusional asshole like he
first thought. She seemed almost … naive, as if she had never been
exposed to the world outside of her warped reality.

Kimber had seen genuine hurt in her eyes
when she mentioned her brother. Was this why he couldn’t expel her
from his mind? Because, for a moment, they had shared a sense of
loss and heartache he had never let his guard down long enough to
experience with anyone else?

Or was it the confusion he saw cross her
features when he called her beautiful? While true, it had slipped
out, and her reaction was not what he expected. Why did he have the
feeling she’d never been complimented before?

“Drop it, Kimber,” he ordered himself and
closed the open browsers on his laptop. As far as he was concerned,
she was a patient, like any other. There was not meant to be any
lasting personal connection between them once she was healed. It
was for her sake as much as his.

He set his laptop aside and searched his
depressing apartment visually for something else to do. If he had
games, they were in the guestroom, and he wasn’t venturing there
again. Their conversation earlier left him uncomfortable for more
reasons than because she was clearly disturbed. He was unwilling to
think about what else bothered him.

Never had Kimber been so anxious to return
to work. He turned off the television and went to his room. He was
about a year short on sleep; if nothing else, he could slumber the
downtime away.

Sometime later, past midnight, glassware
shattering against the hard floor of the kitchen awoke him with a
start. He lay in bed, disoriented as he tried to make sense of the
sound. It was soon followed by the wall at the head of his bed
trembling as something heavy was thrown into it.

Now what?
Kimber launched out of bed, determined to save
what he could of his miserable apartment from Keladry’s
insanity.

He opened the door to his bedroom and
flipped on the hall light.

A body garbed all in black was on the floor
at the end of the hall.

He turned off the lights, thinking he had to
be mistaking, and then turned them back on.

The body remained.

Alarm shot through him, and he hurried down
the hallway, kneeling to check on whether or not the man in black
was hurt.

Kimber felt for a pulse before the angle of
the man’s broken neck fully registered. It wasn’t possible for
anyone to live through that, and the lack of pulse confirmed his
hunch.

Returning to his room, Kimber grabbed his
phone off the nightstand to call the police, only to see the
battery was out again.

“Fuck!” he muttered. He plugged it in and
tried to turn it on. The dead battery symbol popped up.

The wall shuddered again, and his thoughts
shifted from dialing for help to wondering who the hell had killed
the man in his hallway.

Grabbing the baseball bat he kept under his
bed, Kimber left his room and strode once more down the hallway.
His body assumed the tension and light stance he learned in
college, preparing to absorb a tackle by an offensive
linebacker.

He reached the end of the hallway and turned
the corner. It was impossible to tell what was going on in the
dark, but it appeared as if there was a violent dance party in the
middle of his living room. People were thrashing into the walls,
the sofa, knocking over lamps …

Who the hell is
fighting?
He went to the kitchen and turned
on the light. Glass shards sparkled on the floor, where Keladry’s
makeshift alarm had smashed into bits. The light was enough to
illuminate what was happening in the living room, and he froze,
beginning to suspect this was a dream.

Dressed in his boxers and a t-shirt, and
wielding a screwdriver in one hand and the broken shaft of his
broomstick in the other, Keladry was battling two men in black. As
he watched, she plunged the screwdriver into the neck of one of the
men, who fell to the ground, clutching his wound.